I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for accessing a wireless communication system.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available system resources. Examples of such multiple-access systems include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) systems, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) systems, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) systems.
A wireless communication system may include any number of base stations that can support communication for any number of user equipments (UEs). Each UE may communicate with one or more base stations via transmissions on the downlink and uplink. The downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the base stations to the UEs, and the uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the UEs to the base stations.
A UE may send an access probe on the uplink when the UE desires to gain access to the system. A base station may receive the access probe and respond with an access grant that may contain pertinent information for the UE. Uplink resources are consumed to send access probes, and downlink resources are consumed to send access grants. There is therefore a need in the art for techniques to support system access with as little overhead as possible in order to improve system capacity.